{"id":42239,"date":"2019-06-18T06:00:54","date_gmt":"2019-06-18T10:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=42239"},"modified":"2019-06-18T07:24:44","modified_gmt":"2019-06-18T11:24:44","slug":"finding-faith-by-studying-the-underclass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2019\/06\/finding-faith-by-studying-the-underclass\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Faith by Studying the Down-and-Out"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Chris Arnade studied the most destitute and seemingly hopeless Americans\u2013street people, addicts, prostitutes, the wretchedly poor, the \u201cunderclass,\u201d people often referred to as the \u201cdregs of society\u201d\u2013searching for the shreds of human dignity that they still have by getting to know them.\u00a0 And a funny thing happened:\u00a0 He came to faith.<\/p>\n

From a review by Kathryn Jean Lopez of Arnade\u2019s book\u00a0Dignity: Seeing Respect in Back Row America:<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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After attending \u201chundreds of different services [with his subjects in the course of his study],\u201d he \u201ccouldn\u2019t ignore the value in faith, not as a scientist, not as a person who claimed to want to learn from others.\u201d At first, he saw it as a \u201cutility,\u201d but \u201cthere was more to it than that,\u201d he realized. \u201cMy biases, my years steeped in rationality and privilege, [were] limiting a deeper understanding.\u201d Perhaps, he writes, \u201creligion was right, or at least as right as anything could be.\u201d But, he admits, \u201cgetting there requires a level of intellectual humility that I am not sure I have\u201d \u2014 which sounds more than a little bit like humility.<\/p>\n